


Don't Look Past My Shoulder

by elysiumwaits



Series: Ely Writes for Australia [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Angst with a Happy Ending, Billy Hargrove Has PTSD, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Season/Series 03, Soulmates, soulmates share scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:48:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23292739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elysiumwaits/pseuds/elysiumwaits
Summary: Somewhere out there, Billy Hargrove has a soulmate, a perfect match. He should probably apologize for all the scars.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington, Robin Buckley & Billy Hargrove & Steve Harrington
Series: Ely Writes for Australia [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602367
Comments: 43
Kudos: 622





	Don't Look Past My Shoulder

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirsparklepants](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirsparklepants/gifts).



> Written for Harringrove for Australia for SirSparklePants! Hope you like it!
> 
> You know why that Canon Divergence tag is there with Post Series/Season 3. You all know. This is all gonna get Jossed to hell in Season 4, which is fine. I'm in Teen Wolf fandom too, I'm very used to taking characters away from writers and showrunners.
> 
> I am once again cursed by an intense urge to fill all of Steve's dialogue with arbitrary usage of the word "like."
> 
> Speaking of Series 3, uh, I bullshitted a lot of this in terms of injuries and scars. Fair warning!
> 
> Title from "Baba O'Riley" by The Who.

There's a tiny scar on Billy's hairline, and he doesn't know where it came from.

It's a disconcerting feeling, to have scars that he can't trace back to a cause. Billy's got plenty of scars, littered across his body, from small and insignificant to big and eye-catching. They're proof of a life filled with violence and poor decisions, evidence of his many run-ins with monsters both human and supernatural. Most of his scars are from Neil or Neil-adjacent things, like shelves or tables or glass or stoves or cigarettes. Some of them are from picking fights in bars he wasn't even really old enough to be in. One is from falling out of a tree when he was six. 

The universe, Billy thinks, is cruel. 

Because there are a handful of scars that he can't trace back to a specific event. They're the ones that aren't from him at all - a little slice on his finger, a line that stretches down behind his ear that would have needed stitches. 

And now, a little mark, barely there, on his hairline.

Whoever this scar _really_ belongs to, whoever Billy's soulmate is out there in the world, Billy feels sorry for them. After all, the scars they've given Billy are nothing compared to the ones that Billy's given them. A soulmate is supposed to be complementary to you, your perfect match. This is taking it a little far, asking a little too much. 

Now, when he stands in the mirror after a shower and tries not to see through the fog, there's the one that shoots out from the center of his chest, a ball of shiny scar tissue and lightning strike tendrils snaking across his chest. It keeps Billy from going shirtless outside of the house anymore. Hell, keeps Billy from going shirtless _inside_ the house too, just so he doesn't have to look at it. He wonders, sometimes, if his soulmate avoids going shirtless now too. 

The universe has to be cruel, to stick someone out there in the world with a soulmate like _him._

Billy has somehow become the kind of person that people trust with their kids.

Or at least, they're really tired of their own houses being full of noise from a bunch of nerds playing Dungeons & Dragons. Whatever the reason, Billy's stupid, shitty little house that the government bought him has become the go-to "hangout" location for Maxine and her sidekicks. It started with Max coming over when the Hargrove house became too much, and has somehow ballooned into Max having a bedroom and inviting Jane Hopper for sleepovers and, more recently, all of those damn kids for D&D.

Well, it's the stupid, shitty house the government _inadvertently_ bought him, anyway. They gave Billy a check while he was still mostly out of it in a hospital bed, after he shakily signed some papers that really just amounted to "I'll never talk about this ever to anyone." He's not really allowed to leave Hawkins, he found out later. At least, not yet. Maybe someday, or so the guy in the suit told him when he hauled Billy back to Hawkins city limits. Right now, they want to watch him. Just in case.

Which, yeah. He gets that. Doesn't make it easier.

So here he is. Stuck in Bumfuck, Indiana. Surrounded on all sides by cornfields, cows, and creepy woods. Playing chaperone to a living room full of barely-teens hopped up on an insane amount of caffeine, sugar, and hormones. Somewhere along the way, people like Chief Hopper and Joyce Byers started thinking he was a good enough person to keep an eye on their kids, but with Maxine came Jane, and with Jane came the Wheeler kid. It just snowballed from there. Now there's a kid in a wizard's hat at a card table with a bunch of mismatched chairs around it.

Billy doesn't get it. 

But also, he doesn't hate it. 

There might be a reason he tolerates it. Might be a few reasons, if he's being honest. The main one, though, is standing in the open archway between the kitchen and the living room in a Family Video uniform, currently telling Billy that he's thinking he's gonna order pizza. 

"Hawaiian?" Steve asks, already flipping through the phonebook by the phone. "Like, for you and me, I mean. No one else wants it, but, like, Hawaiian is the best, and they're all wrong." 

The snort of laughter escapes Billy before he can help it. He never expected that he'd have much in common with Steve Harrington. Now, they almost have _too_ much in common - pineapple on pizza is probably the most innocuous of it all. "Whatever," he says, putting his beer to the side. He does want Hawaiian, actually, so he shifts off of the counter and digs his wallet out of his back pocket.

"I got it," Steve says without turning around, just like he always does when they order food on Friday nights so that the kids aren't just eating Doritos and M&Ms all night. Sometimes Billy cooks, sometimes a parent sends dinner along with their respective offspring. Sometimes they all pile into cars and go wreak havoc at the late-night diner before everyone heads home. 

Just like Billy always does when they order, he pulls out a twenty dollar bill and waits for Steve to actually start placing the order before he shoves it into Steve's back pocket. Steve never quite manages to completely fend him off when he's mid-pizza order, since he's trapped by the corded phone and can't chase Billy across the living room to get it back. As long as Billy stays on his toes, Steve won't be able to slip it back into his pocket. Sometimes Steve cheats and sticks it in the pocket of Billy's jacket on his way out the door, and Billy's got to get creative about giving it back to him. Billy's pretty sure they've been passing this particular twenty back and forth for three months now.

He grabs his beer again and heads back into the living room while Steve's ordering the food. Really, Billy had only gone into the kitchen for a breather - sometimes the noise of everyone packed like sardines into the living room is just... a _lot_. It's hard to handle, makes him trapped every now and again. If it's just Max and a couple of her friends, or even just Steve and Buckley sprawled out on Billy's secondhand furniture, that's one thing. All of kids, plus Wheeler and Byers, on top of Max, Steve, and Buckley? That's a lot of people trying not to step on each other to get around. 

Billy's getting better about it. He used to spend the whole night in the kitchen or in his bedroom, instead of socializing with anyone at all. Now he just ducks out if the walls start feeling like they're closing in around him, spends some time just breathing with his ass planted on the kitchen counter. Sometimes, Steve comes in and plants his ass on the kitchen counter next to him, or leans against the wall, or helps himself to a beer. 

Buckley's sprawled in the armchair with a book she's not actually reading, a beat-up S.E. Hinton with creases in the spine. The couch is vacant, but the front door is open and he can see Wheeler and Byers out on the porch through the screen. It's not a warm night, but all of the bodies in one room make it hot inside. Besides, this just means Billy actually gets to sit on his own couch, for once. 

"Better not be dog-earing my pages, Buckley," he says when he settles onto the couch, feels the springs behind him give a little too much. That's what he gets for getting it from the secondhand store. It's comfortable to sleep on, though, or so he's been told.

Baby Byers is talking about something that sounds like a mix between a giant centipede and a dinosaur. Billy really doesn't want to know, he's had enough of monsters for one lifetime. It's why he hasn't given in and played with them yet, even though Max has asked a couple of times now. He might one of these days, but right now the descriptions of parts of the game make his stomach turn unpleasantly.

For all her protests, Buckley always gets a little sucked into the story. She tears her focus away, though, never one to pass up an opportunity to roll her eyes at Billy. "I'm not a heathen," she says. "I have a _bookmark_. It's Steve you want to yell at for the dog-ears in _Fellowship of the Ring_."

"Just throwin' him under the bus, huh." Billy shakes his head. 

She shrugs, and then she puts her bookmark in and closes the book with a flourish. "See? No dog-eared pages here." 

"I'm watching you, Buckley." He raises the beer to mouth so that she doesn't see him smiling. Can't have people thinking he's gone _too_ soft, or they'll do something horrible. Like dog-ear the pages of the books he lends them.

"No, you're not," Buckley says, leaning over the edge of the armchair to say, quietly and teasingly. "You're _way_ too busy watching Steve."

He feels his cheeks heat, and he clears his throat, trying to will the blush away with a glare. Turns out that Billy has a surprisingly amount in common with Buckley, too. As far as he knows, she's the only one who's figured him out, and he'd like to keep it that way. "He's not even in here," he mutters back. "So yeah, I _am_ watching you."

Of course, Steve chooses that moment to come in. Billy watches Steve edge around where the kids are intently rolling dice and then step clean over the rickety coffee table to throw himself down onto the couch next to Billy. The cushions underneath and behind him squeak in protest. 

"The pizza has been ordered!" he announces grandly, and tosses his arm across the back of the couch with a tired, content sigh. 

Billy resolutely doesn't look over at Buckley. It doesn't mean anything other than that Steve is tired and wants to stretch out, he knows. He's just leaving the other cushion open for Byers or Wheeler when they come back inside. Buckley's one of those romantic types, sees a lot of meaning and intent where it isn't. 

"They outside?" Steve asks, looking around the room. 

The book makes a little barely-there thump when Buckley drops it onto the coffee table, which is enough to make the whole thing teeter obnoxiously. Billy's got his old high school math textbook under one of the legs, but it's not doing much in the way of stability. He keeps meaning to take it out to the garage and try to fix it, but he keeps finding himself busier these days than he planned. Between working at the garage and the way people keep showing up at his door uninvited, he's not actually getting a lot of home improvement shit done.

"Yeah," she sighs. "They're comparing scars again or something, I don't know."

Steve makes a little sound somewhere between amusement and annoyance. "What, like they haven't found them all already?" 

"Oh, please, like you wouldn't if you got your hands on _your_ soulmate." Buckley flops back into the armchair. "Yours has probably got some stories to tell, since you're covered in scars." 

There's something to her tone, something that speaks of a joke Billy's not in on. Her words sting in a weird way, and Billy takes a drink of his beer to hide that he's... he doesn't know. Getting upset wouldn't mean anything, it's not like she's talking about him specifically. If anything, he's annoyed _for_ Steve. Somewhere out there is Steve Harrington's perfect match, and he's covered Steve in scars. Billy's seen a couple in the showers at school, but he never used to care enough to pay attention to them. He can't even recall which ones Steve has. 

"Robin," Steve says, sounding actually annoyed now. "I don't know if _my soulmate_ would want me talking about the scars I've got."

"At least you have them," she says, but she's smiling. Again, Billy feels like he's missing the punchline here. "The only scars I have are the ones I gave myself, so finding the girl of my dreams is gonna depend completely and totally on asking people if they have a scar shaped kind of like Idaho on her ass." 

Alright, that's a conversation Billy can follow. "Idaho?" he asks, and this time he doesn't bother to hide the grin. "On your _ass_?"

She glances at him and then looks at Steve with narrowed eyes. "Don't you dare-"

"Robin was sneaking out and caught her shorts on the window, fell out, and had road rash from the concrete on her ass for two weeks." Steve's arms drops a little as he laughs.

Billy lets out a laugh as well, pretends his stupid heart doesn't skip a stupid beat at the heavy weight of Steve's arm across his shoulders now instead of the couch. "I'm guessing you don't sneak out much," he says, kicking out a foot to knock her leg. Then, he adds an eyebrow waggle. "Some of us have it down to a fine art."

"Sneak out of your own house often, Hargrove?" Buckley's still got that look on her face, like she knows something he doesn't. "What about you, you got any scars from _your_ soulmate?"

Steve sighs. "Robin," he says again, like a warning.

Which, fuck that. Billy can fight his own battles. It's whatever, he doesn't mind to talk about this. As long as they don't ask about any of the other scars. "I've given the poor fucker stuck with me more than they've given me," he says. "But I got, like... one on my finger, and one behind my ear." He actually lifts the finger with the tiny slice to tap the one behind his left ear. It's then that he realizes just how close Steve is sitting, when his arm brushes against Steve's shirt and the warmth of his body. 

"Oh, is that all?" Buckley asks. She's weirdly intense, even leaned back in the recliner like she is. 

It's weird. This whole conversation is weird. Billy shrugs, feels his shoulder brush Steve again. "I mean, yeah?" 

"No," Maxine says from the table. She's the only one paying attention to them, twisted around in her chair to give him a look like he's supposed to know. "You have the one you noticed the other day, too." And then she turns back to her game, rocking back in the chair and tapping her pencil.

"Hey, all four legs on the floor, you'll crack your head like an egg." It's a reflexive habit to correct her, just like it's a reflexive habit for her to throw up a half-hearted middle finger without turning around. 

"You have another one?" Steve asks, nudging him. 

"Oh, yeah." Billy lifts a hand, runs it self-consciously through his hair. His finger passes over the scar in question as he does. "Wait, weren't you just trying to get her off my back?" He turns his head, shoots Steve a grin that he usually saves for chatting up girls (or, more rarely, guys, but finding guys receptive to that kind of thing are hard to find out here in Indiana). He doesn't wait to see Steve's expression before he's turning back to Buckley, pulling some hair aside. "I have this one. It's real fuckin' tiny, don't know how long it's been there." 

Buckley leans over and looks at it. To Billy's surprise, so does Steve. After a moment, they both lean back, and Billy shakes his hair back into place. 

"Well, I mean. You've _probably_ had it for awhile," Buckley says after a moment, watching Billy take a drink. His beer's nearly empty, which is a shame, since the pizza should show up any minute. "Like, a long while, honestly. Something that small, you probably didn't even notice when it actually scarred, right? So you could have had it for even... a _year_."

" _Robin_ ," Steve says, exasperated and annoyed. "Knock it off, he doesn't-"

The screen door is another thing on Billy's list to fix, makes an unholy screeching sound when it opens. It's Wheeler that pokes her head in just long enough to say, "Pizza's here." 

That gets the kids' attention, so Steve heaves himself off the couch. Billy takes the opportunity to get up as well, escapes back into the kitchen under the guise of grabbing a stack of paper plates and napkins to hopefully minimize the chances of pizza ending up on the floor or the furniture. He pauses when he grabs the plates off of the edge of the kitchen table, just before he balances the napkins on top. For a moment, he just stares down at them. It feels like he should be recalling something here, like there's a distant bell ringing and he knows the tune. He can't place it. 

Whatever. It's just a result of the frankly weird conversation he just had about his soulmate and his scars. Billy turns, grabs his beer off the counter as he goes, without paying any attention, and his hand slams into something hot and solid. 

"Oh, _shit,_ " Steve says, holding five pizza boxes in his hands, and now the remnants of Billy's beer on his shirt. "I'm sorry! There was no room on the card table for these. I thought you heard me, I was just coming to sit them down."

The back of Billy's knuckles sting from the corner of the pizza box. "Fuck," he replies, sidestepping Steve and dropping the now-empty bottle into the trash. Tiny, shitty government-funded house strikes again. "Here, sit those down, I got a shirt you can borrow long enough to wash that one."

Steve does sit the pizza boxes down on the small kitchen table, but he also says, "No, it's fine, I can just wash it when I -"

"You get home at like one in the morning after D&D," Billy interrupts. He drops the plates and the napkins next to the pizza. "You work Saturday mornings. You're not gonna fuckin' wash it, pretty boy, just throw it in my laundry and let it run while the kids play their stupid game." The 'pretty boy' slips off of his tongue before he can catch it. He's been trying not to use it as much, doesn't want the reminder of what a jackass he used to be to Steve.

Mostly he doesn't want Steve to remember. If Steve remembers, he might stop coming around

He walks away before Steve can argue further, figures Steve will either follow him or he won't. As he heads down the hall, passing Max's bedroom and the bathroom, he hears Steve tell everyone else that the pizzas are in the kitchen. By the time Billy's digging a clean shirt out of a hamper, Steve's standing in the doorway to his bedroom, looking strangely uncomfortable and worried. He's even got the little line in forehead. 

"Here." Billy walks over and hands the shirt to Steve. It's black, has some local band logo on the front from the Santa Cruz music scene. He picked it up at the concert before he found out they were moving to Indiana, has only recently rotated it back into the shit he wears. 

Steve takes it, and then... does absolutely nothing. Just stands there, holding Billy's shirt in one hand, looking at him.

"Well, come on," Billy says, holding out a hand and snapping his fingers impatiently. "If you want that shirt washed, you're gonna have to take it off."

For a long moment, Steve doesn't move, just standing and fidgeting with the hem of the beer-stained uniform shirt he's still got on. Billy's got the vague idea of wrestling it off of him, is trying to tell himself that _that_ wouldn't be welcome, when Steve finally lets out an explosive sigh-groan combo and says, "Okay, but you have to understand that I didn't know how to tell you."

Billy's confused before it hits him, and then he can't help but smirk. "I won't tell anyone about your embarrassing..." _Tattoo_ is the word he's going to say. He stops abruptly, though, because Steve is standing shirtless in front of him, red-cheeked and averting his eyes. There's no bad flash anywhere, no crappy stick-and-poke art, no one's initials over his heart.

There's just a scar. Big, in the middle, with uneven lines snaking out over his chest. Like a creature from another world stabbed him in the chest.

Except that never happened to Steve. Billy may not remember the scars Steve has, but he knows the ones that Steve _shouldn't_ have. 

That scar is Billy's. 

"I didn't know how to tell you," Steve repeats, softer than before. He's talking but Billy can't tear his eyes away from Steve's chest. "By the time I figured it out, you were in the hospital recovering and I... I didn't know if you would, like, even _want_ to know." 

Billy should say something. He doesn't know what to _say_ , though, can't find words to encompass the maelstrom of bullshit that he's feeling right now. Buckley knew, she had to have known. That explains the weird conversation in the living room, at least. 

"Billy." The scar vanishes as Steve quickly pulls on the shirt, covers it up with the black fabric and that dumb logo for that dumb band. "Billy, say something."

His mind skitters back to the scars he has that he can't place. One on his finger, one behind his ear, one on his hairline. The finger has always struck him as a cooking accident. The one behind his ear as a fall from a bike, maybe, just deep enough to need to be stitched up. But the hairline scar, that's small. It's the kind of scar, he realizes, that someone would have if they had a plate broken over their face. 

So what he ends up saying is, "Fuck. Fuck, Steve, I'm _so sorry_." 

Those aren't words that Billy Hargrove says very often. He should probably leave, step out of the room and pick up the uniform shirt that's on the floor to throw it in the wash. He told Steve that he would, after all, but he can't get his feet to move. Especially when he finally looks up, away from the phantom image of that scar - the one he _gave_ Steve, fucking _tainted_ him with - and finds that Steve looks stricken, as though Billy's hauled off and smacked him. Or smashed another plate over his head.

"I'm sorry," Billy chokes out again. "I didn't - you don't _deserve_..." He's not sure how to finish that thought, the words fail him halfway through. 'Those scars,' maybe, or even 'You don't deserve to be stuck with me.'

"Don't... don't _apologize_ ," Steve finally says. "If anything, I should be the one, like, groveling or whatever. I knew and didn't tell you, but I didn't know if you... and you were _recovering_ , okay, and you'd been through a _lot_ , so I just kept thinking that I'd tell you next time I saw you." He pauses, and then adds, "But then we were friends and I didn't want to ruin that, if you don't, like... if you don't feel the same way. Like, if you don't want to get _together_ or whatever, I'll understand." 

That throws Billy. He's not sure he's following anymore. He blinks a couple of times, squeezes his eyes shut and counts down from five, breathing in and then out again, controlled. Steve is quiet, like he's waiting - he's always been good about Billy having to take a minute to get his wits about him, when he's come into the kitchen or out on the porch after Billy's had to step out. And, shit, Steve's known this whole time. 

Steve's known this _whole time_ , since Billy came back from the mess that was Starcourt. Since he started coming over with or without the kids, since he's been paying for Billy's take-out and diner food. Steve's known that the giant scar in the center of his chest is from Billy, and he likes Billy anyway. Wants to get _together_ with him, apparently.

"I'm not..." The words come out hoarse and cracked. Billy stops, swallows, and then tries again. "I'm not _good_ , okay, you deserve better than _this_." He makes a vague, aborted gesture at the scar on his own chest. The rest of it is hard to get out, but it's important. And maybe he's practiced it one way or another in his head a couple of times, in the same way that he puts himself in movies and books, as a fantasy. "But I'm trying to be. Better, I mean. I'm trying to be better. So if you... I've wanted _you_ for..."

Steve's face goes soft again, eyes crinkling as the bare bones of a smile starts to break. "We're a mess," he says. "Like, we're that pair in the movie that has people screaming at us through the screen to get our shit together."

Billy manages to crack something of a smile as well. He even means it. "Is this us getting our shit together?"

"I think so." There's a moment of silence between them, just a little beat where Billy watches Steve chew on his lip for a second. Then Steve says, "I don't mind the scars. I'd really like to kiss you? And then I'd like to go, uh, throw my shirt in the wash and eat some pizza, because I'm _starving_ , honestly." 

"Yeah." Billy's voice is still a little shot, but his heart doesn't feel like it's about to jump out of his chest and go running down the street anymore. He probably should have known, now that he thinks about it. 

Steve scratches at the back of his neck. "And then I was thinking, maybe after the kids leave, I could... stick around? And we could talk? Or, like, make out. Or whatever." 

He opens his mouth, presumably to continue his nervous ramble. Billy steps close, cuts him off with a kiss and a hand cupped on his jaw. It's his left one, and the tip of his finger with the little scar just barely brushes over the one behind Steve's ear. It's a big risk for him, and maybe his heart will leap out of his throat after all. At least, until Steve's hand curls in his shirt, and Steve starts kissing _back._

It turns out that Billy has a lot in common with Steve, much more than he ever expected. Scars and the strange, terrifying life experiences courtesy of Hawkins, Indiana, are just the tip of the iceberg. When it comes down to it, they complement each other, and maybe the most important things they share are the little things. Like the way that Steve keeps sticking that same twenty in the books he borrows from Billy like a bookmark, or the way he sometimes needs a quiet moment in the kitchen, or on the porch, or in Billy's bedroom when they're all together, away from the loud noise of rambunctious barely-teens on sugar highs.

The fact that Steve likes pineapple on pizza, though. That's how Billy knows that Steve is truly his perfect match. 

**Author's Note:**

> The end is a little cheesy, sorry!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] Don't Look Past My Shoulder](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24267709) by [morph_reads](https://archiveofourown.org/users/morph_reads/pseuds/morph_reads)




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